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Judging Jefferson

Submitted by kebernet on Mon, 03/07/2005 - 12:30
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From WaPo via Political Wire:
"Bashing" Thomas Jefferson "is an easy game," a Washington Post book review notes. "Among some historians, it's fashionable to denigrate the founder who spoke out the most passionately for democracy, equality, religious tolerance, separation of church and state and freedom of expression and conscience. But Andrew Burstein's Jefferson's Secrets takes a different tack, one that is more subtle, more penetrating and ultimately more rewarding. Focusing on the 17 intellectually rich years Jefferson had after he retired from public life, Burstein asks what Jefferson's life looked like to him. How did Jefferson make moral sense of his world? What roles did family, women, sex, slavery, health, religion and politics play in his life?"
You know, while Franklin is still my favorite "founding father" I still find myself drawn to Jefferson in very compelling ways. With now some 250 years worth of American politics centering around the division between Hamilton and Jefferson, it is hard not to be. Still, it is sad when even those two ideals, even ideologies have been dragged through the mud by the petty and the mean in the political world until they are at the very best, shadows of what they were.

Comments

RE: Judging Jefferson

Submitted by atrox (not verified) on Wed, 03/09/2005 - 16:15.
I have to call Jefferson my favorite. He consistently stood up for democracy, government by the people for the people (in the face of the federalists and Hamilton of course as you mention) and separation of church and state AND religious tolerance. What strikes me as funny is that so many people do now like to bash him and moreover many people dont know a damn thing about any of them and proclaim the "founding fathers" based this nation on God and Christianity. Look that shit up I say, see what Jefferson had to say about that ;).

RE: Judging Jefferson

Submitted by anonymous (not verified) on Wed, 03/09/2005 - 16:18.
Because religious belief, or non-belief, is such an important part of every person's life, freedom of religion affects every individual. Religious institutions that use government power in support of themselves and force their views on persons of other faiths, or of no faith, undermine all our civil rights. Moreover, state support of an established religion tends to make the clergy unresponsive to their own people, and leads to corruption within religion itself. Erecting the "wall of separation between church and state," therefore, is absolutely essential in a free society. -- TJ, peace out

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